Mr. Bendelow
There are certain districts in London the appearance of which conveys
to the observer the impression that the houses, and indeed, the entire
streets, have been picked up second-hand. There is in this aspect a
grey, colourless, mouldy quality, reminiscent, not of the antique
shop, but rather of the marine store dealers; a quality which even
communicates itself to the inhabitants, so that one gathers the
impression that the whole neighbourhood was taken as a going concern.
It was on such a district that I found myself looking down from the
top of an omnibus a few days after the inquest (Dr. Cornish’s brougham
being at the moment under repairs and his horse “out to grass” during
the slack season), being bound for a street in the neighbourhood of
Hoxton—Market-street by name—which abutted, as I had noticed when
making out my route, on the Regent’s Canal. The said route I had
written out, and now, in the intervals of my surveys of the unlovely
prospect, I divided my attention between it and the note which had
summoned me to these remote regions.
Concerning the latter I was somewhat curious, for the envelope was
addressed, not to Dr. Cornish, but to “Dr. Stephen Gray.” This was
really quite an odd circumstance. Either the writer knew me personally
or was aware that I was acting as locum tenens for Cornish. But the
name—James Morris—was unknown to me, and a careful inspection of the
index of the ledger had failed to bring to light any one answering to
the description. So Mr. Morris was presumably a stranger to my
principal also. The note, which had been left by hand in the morning,
requested me to call “as early in the forenoon as possible,” which
seemed to hint at some degree of urgency. Naturally, as a young
practitioner, I speculated with interest, not entirely unmingled with
anxiety, on the possible nature of the case, and also on the patient’s
reasons for selecting a medical attendant whose residence was so
inconveniently far away.
In accordance with my written route, I got off the omnibus at the
corner of Shepherdess-walk, and pursuing that pastoral thoroughfare
for some distance, presently plunged into a labyrinth of streets
adjoining it and succeeded most effectually in losing myself. However,
inquiries addressed to an intelligent fish-vendor elicited a most
lucid direction and I soon found myself in a little, drab street which
justified its name by giving accommodation to a row of stationary
barrows loaded with what looked like the “throw-outs” from a colossal
spring clean. Passing along this kerb-side market and reflecting (like
Diogenes, in similar circumstances) how many things there were in the
world that I did not want, I walked slowly up the street looking for
Number 23—my patient’s number—and the canal which I had seen on the
map. I located them both at the same instant, for Number 23 turned out
to be the last house on the opposite side, and a few yards beyond it
the street was barred by a low wall, over which, as I looked, the mast
of a sailing-barge came into view and slowly crept past. I stepped up
to the wall and looked over. Immediately beneath me was the
towing-path, alongside which the barge was now bringing up and
beginning to lower her mast, apparently in order to pass under a
bridge that spanned the canal some two hundred yards farther along.
From these nautical manœuvres I transferred my attention to my
patient’s house—or, at least, so much of it as I could see; for Number
23 appeared to consist of a shop with nothing over it. There was,
however, in a wall which extended to the canal wall a side door with a
bell and knocker, so I inferred that the house was behind the shop,
and that the latter had been built on a formerly existing front
garden. The shop itself was somewhat reminiscent of the stalls down
the street, for though the fascia was newly painted (with the
inscription “J. Morris, General Dealer”) the stock-in-trade exhibited
in the window was in the last stage of senile decay. It included, I
remember, a cracked Toby jug, a mariner’s sextant of an obsolete type,
a Dutch clock without hands, a snuff-box, one or two plaster
statuettes, an invalid punch-bowl, a shiny, dark, and inscrutable oil
painting and a plaster mask, presumably the death mask of some
celebrity whose face was unknown to me.
My examination of this collection was brought to a sudden end by the
apparition of a face above the half-blind of glazed shop-door; the
face of a middle-aged woman who seemed to be inspecting me with
malevolent interest. Assuming—rather too late—a brisk, professional
manner, I opened the shop door, thereby setting a bell jangling
within, and confronted the owner of the face.
“I am Dr. Gray,” I began to explain.
“Side door,” she interrupted brusquely. “Ring the bell and knock.”
I backed out hastily and proceeded to follow the directions, giving a
tug at the bell and delivering a flourish on the knocker. The hollow
reverberations of the latter almost suggested an empty house, but my
vigorous pull at the bell-handle produced no audible result, from
which I inferred—wrongly, as afterwards appeared—that it was out of
repair. After waiting quite a considerable time, I was about to repeat
the performance when I heard sounds within; and then the door was
opened, to my surprise, by the identical sour-faced woman whom I had
seen in the shop. As her appearance and manner did not invite
conversation, and she uttered no word, I followed her in silence
through a long passage, or covered way, which ran parallel to the side
of the shop and presumably crossed the site of the garden. It ended at
a door which opened into the hall proper; a largish square space into
which the doors of the ground-floor rooms opened. It contained the
main staircase and was closed in at the farther end by a heavy curtain
which extended from wall to wall.
We proceeded in this funereal manner up the stairs to the first floor
on the landing of which my conductress halted and for the first time
broke the silence.
“You will probably find Mr. Bendelow asleep or dozing,” she said in a
rather gruff voice. “If he is, there is no need for you to disturb
him.”
“Mr. Bendelow!” I exclaimed. “I understood that his name was Morris.”
“Well, it isn’t,” she retorted. “It is Bendelow. My name is Morris and
so is my husband’s. It was he who wrote to you.”
“By the way,” said I, “how did he know my name? I am acting for Dr.
Cornish, you know.”
“I didn’t know,” said she, “and I don’t suppose he did. Probably the
servant told him. But it doesn’t matter. Here you are, and you will do
as well as another. I was telling you about Mr. Bendelow. He is in a
pretty bad way. The specialist whom Mr. Morris took him to—Dr. Artemus
Cropper—said he had cancer of the bi-lorus, whatever that is——”
“Pylorus,” I corrected.
“Well, pylorus, then, if you prefer it,” she said impatiently. “At any
rate, whatever it is, he’s got cancer of it; and, as I said before, he
is in a pretty bad way. Dr. Cropper told us what to do, and we are
doing it. He wrote out full directions as to diet—I will show them to
you presently—and he said that Mr. Bendelow was to have a dose of
morphia if he complained of pain—which he does, of course; and that,
as there was no chance of his getting better, it didn’t matter how
much morphia he had. The great thing was to keep him out of pain. So
we give it to him twice a day—at least, my husband does—and that keeps
him fairly comfortable. In fact, he sleeps most of the time, and is
probably dozing now; so you are not likely to get much out of him,
especially as he is rather hard of hearing even when he is awake. And
now you had better come in and have a look at him.”
She advanced to the door of a room and opened it softly, and I
followed in a somewhat uncomfortable frame of mind. It seemed to me
that I had no function but that of a mere figure-head. Dr. Cropper,
whom I knew by name as a physician of some reputation, had made the
diagnosis and prescribed the treatment, neither of which I, as a mere
beginner, would think of contesting. It was an unsatisfactory, even an
ignominious, position from which my professional pride revolted. But
apparently it had to be accepted.
Mr. Bendelow was a most remarkable-looking man. Probably he had always
been somewhat peculiar in appearance; but now the frightful emaciation
(which strongly confirmed Cropper’s diagnosis) had so accentuated his
original peculiarities that he had the appearance of some dreadful,
mirthless caricature. Under the influence of the remorseless disease,
every structure which was capable of shrinking had shrunk to the
vanishing-point, leaving the unshrinkable skeleton jutting out with a
most horrible and grotesque effect. His great hooked nose, which must
always have been strikingly prominent, stuck out now, thin and sharp,
like the beak of some bird of prey. His heavy, beetling brows, which
must always have given to his face a frowning sullenness, now overhung
sockets which had shrunk away into mere caverns. His naturally high
cheek-bones were now not only prominent, but exhibited the details of
their structure as one sees them in a dry skull. Altogether, his
aspect was at once pitiable and forbidding. Of his age I could form no
estimate. He might have been a hundred. The wonder was that he was
still alive; that there was yet left in that shrivelled body enough
material to enable its mechanism to continue its functions.
He was not asleep, but was in that somnolent, lethargic state that is
characteristic of the effects of morphia. He took no notice of me when
I approached the bed, nor even when I spoke his name somewhat loudly.
“I told you you wouldn’t get much out of him,” said Mrs. Morris,
looking at me with a sort of grim satisfaction. “He doesn’t have a
great deal to say to any of us nowadays.”
“Well,” said I, “there is no need to rouse him, but I had better just
examine him, if only as a matter of form. I can’t take the case
entirely on hearsay.”
“I suppose not,” she agreed. “You know best. Do what you think
necessary, but don’t disturb him more than you can help.”
It was not a prolonged examination. The first touch of my fingers on
the shrunken abdomen made me aware of the unmistakable hard mass and
rendered further exploration needless. There could be no doubt as to
the nature of the case or of what the future held in store. It was
only a question of time, and a short time at that.
The patient submitted to the examination quite passively, but he
seemed to be fully aware of what was going on, for he looked at me in
a sort of drunken, dreamy fashion, but without any sign of interest in
my proceedings. When I had finished, I looked him over again, trying
to reconstitute him as he might have been before this deadly disease
fastened on him. I observed that he seemed to have a fair crop of hair
of a darkish iron-grey. I say “seemed,” because the greater part of
his head was covered by a skull cap of black silk; but a fringe of
hair straying from under it on to the forehead suggested that he was
not bald. His teeth, too, which were rather conspicuous, were natural
teeth and in good preservation. In order to verify this fact, I
stooped and raised his lip the better to examine them. But at this
point Mrs. Morris intervened.
“There, that will do,” she said impatiently. “You are not a dentist,
and his teeth will last as long as he will want them. If you have
finished you had better come with me and I will show you Dr. Cropper’s
prescriptions. Then you can tell me if you have any further directions
to give.”
She led the way out of the room, and when I had made a farewell
gesture to the patient (of which he took no notice) I followed her
down the stairs to the ground floor where she ushered me into a small,
rather elegantly furnished room. Here she opened the flap of a bureau
and from one of the little drawers took an open envelope which she
handed to me. It contained one or two prescriptions for occasional
medicines, and a sheet of directions relative to the diet and general
management of the patient, including the administration of morphia.
The latter read, under the general heading, “Simon Bendelow, Esq.”:
“As the case progresses, it will probably be necessary to administer
morphine regularly, but the amount given should, if possible, be
restricted to ¼ gr. Morph. Sulph., not more than twice a day; but, of
course, the hopeless prognosis and probable early termination of the
case make some latitude admissible.”
Although I was in complete agreement with the writer, I was a little
puzzled by these documents. They were signed “Artemus Cropper, M.D.,”
but they were not addressed to any person by name. They appeared to
have been given to Mr. Morris, in whose possession they now were; but
the use of the word “morphine” instead of the more familiar “morphia”
and the generally technical phraseology seemed inappropriate to
directions addressed to lay persons. As I returned them I remarked:
“These directions read as if they had been intended for the
information of a medical man.”
“They were,” she replied. “They were meant for the doctor who was
attending Mr. Bendelow at the time. When we moved to this place I got
them from him to show to the new doctor. You are the new doctor.”
“Then you haven’t been here very long?”
“No,” she replied. “We have only just moved in. And that reminds me
that our stock of morphia is running out. Could you bring a fresh tube
of the tabloids next time you call? My husband left an empty tube for
me to give you to remind you what size the tabloids are. He gives Mr.
Bendelow the injections.”
“Thank you,” said I, “but I don’t want the empty tube. I read the
prescription and shan’t forget the dose. I will bring a new tube
to-morrow—that is, if you want me to call every day. It seems hardly
necessary.”
“No, it doesn’t,” she agreed. “I should think twice a week would be
quite enough. Monday and Thursday would suit me best; if you could
manage to come about this time I should be sure to be in. My time is
rather taken up, as I haven’t a servant at present.”
It was a bad arrangement. Fixed appointments are things to avoid in
medical practice. Nevertheless I agreed to it—subject to unforeseen
obstacles—and was forthwith conducted back along the covered way and
launched into the outer world with a farewell which it would be
inadequate to describe as unemotional.
As I turned away from the door I cast a passing glance at the shop
window; and once again I perceived a face above the half-blind. It was
a man’s face this time; presumably the face of Mr. Morris. And, like
his wife, he seemed to be “taking stock of me.” I returned the
attention, and carried away with me the instantaneous mental
photograph of a man in that unprepossessing transitional state between
being clean-shaved and wearing a beard which is characterized by a
sort of grubby prickliness that disfigures the features without
obscuring them. His stubble was barely a week old, but as his
complexion and hair were dark, the effect was very untidy and
disreputable. And yet, as I have said, it did not obscure the
features. I was even able, in that momentary glance, to note a detail
which would probably have escaped a non-medical eye: the scar of a
hare-lip which had been very neatly and skilfully mended, and which a
moustache would probably have concealed altogether.
I did not, however, give much thought to Mr. Morris. It was his
dour-faced wife, with her gruff, over-bearing manner who principally
occupied my reflections. She seemed to have divined in some way that I
was but a beginner—perhaps my youthful appearance gave her the
hint—and to have treated me with almost open contempt. In truth my
position was not a very dignified one. The diagnosis of the case had
been made for me, the treatment had been prescribed for me, and was
being carried out by other hands than mine. My function was to support
a kind of legal fiction that I was conducting the case, but
principally to supply the morphia (which a chemist might have refused
to do), and when the time came, to sign the death certificate. It was
an ignominious rôle for a young and ambitious practitioner, and my
pride was disposed to boggle at it. But yet there was nothing to which
I could object. The diagnosis was undoubtedly correct, and the
treatment and management of the case exactly such as I should have
prescribed. Finally I decided that my dissatisfaction was principally
due to the unattractive personality of Mrs. Morris; and with this
conclusion I dismissed the case from my mind and let my thoughts
wander into more agreeable channels.